Are IPS notebooks worth it?

Are notebooks that have IPS screens worth it? Do they enhance the screen quality differably?
And when are they coming to the 1080p screens notebooks?

 

Yes.

Seriously, if I'm going to pay for a laptop it better have an IPS or better display. Or there better be a catch that outweighs the negative sides of TN panel.

 

Some people might answer that, if you need to ask then likely no. But if you mean are they worth the extra cost? It depends. You get what you pay for but you may never know/see the difference unless you have the content and applications necessary to make the best use of it.

If all you do is text and play DVD content then it wouldn't make much sense to pay for a IPS panel. However, for content creators/developers and serious photo or video specialist it is an invaluable tool and addition well worth the investment.

An ISP panel can give you color accuracy, a wider gamut, and better viewing angles. All of which is needed in abundance for these groups.

For those that just want to best of what they can get for pure enjoyment, it can be used solely for that purpose as well. There's no rule that says you have to be a professional to use professional equipment. If you have the means to afford it. Also, don't forget the panel needs an adequate card to drive it.

 

in-plane switching (IPS) prevents color distortion or fading when the screen is seen from different angles. So screens with IPS have consistent picture quality comparable to looking at the "sweet spot" on an LCD screen without similar technology. The only down side of IPS is a slower pixel response time, which can sometimes lead to "ghosting" in games. So if you're a competetive gamer, an IPS screen may not be the best, but for all other usage scenarios, it's a good thing to have.

 

Only screens with 10-bit color require special video cards, and there are plenty of IPS screens without that.

 

One word: 120Hz.

That and the response time as mentioned above.

Seriously having experienced the difference between 60 and 120Hz I don't think I can ever go back to 60Hz. Until they come out with a true 120Hz IPS panel (no those "overclockable" <del>Dogdung</del> Catheaps don't count), I'll take 120Hz over IPS any day.

 

Yes, they're worth it. Three years ago, when I was last looking for a new laptop it was debatable because you could only get them on a few machines and even for those they cost a minimum of $400 extra. However, today you can get something like the ASUS N550JK (IPS touchscreen at 1980x1080) for $1100 so they're not that expensive anymore and they do look better.

 

My perspective.

 

But I've noticed the IPS screen on gamer notebooks all have resolutions above 1920x1080, like 2880x1620, crazy!

 

MSI ship pls screens in their retail models both 1080p and 3k.

 

Well I've been using normal tft or whatever screen, as well as whatever m11x r3 has, now I got a full hd ips, it looks so amazing in comparison, so much more life like and true and stuff... You really need to compare it, difference is well worth it.

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I'll take IPS over the TN anytime...

 

The colours are actually noticable better in IPS.
White is white, black is black and you get a beautiful spark with the colours.
With TN displays the white is usually greyish and the colours a little dull.

Viewing angles are also much better with IPS, and with TN you got to have it in certain angle to be perfect.

That is incorrect, according to Notebookcheck, GT70 2PE is still using the Chi Mei TN display. Their viewing angle test is a dead give away that its a standard TN display
http://www.notebookcheck.com/Test-MSI-GT70-2PE-890US-Gaming-Notebook.114724.0.html

Same with their workstation GT70. Still using the dull Chi Mei display
http://www.notebookcheck.net/MSI-GT70-20Li716121B-Workstation-Review.116332.0.html

 

honestly it depends on the panels, not all IPS etc are good. all tend to have better viewing angles but color accuracy, white point etc all vary greatly among them. for example there were a number of TN panels from AUO that were much more color accurate than a large portion of todays consumer IPS screens including the rMBP. IPS screens seem to vary from about 60% sRGB gamut all the way to 114% aRGB ( 180% sRGB )

just from a small sample of my personal machines with IPS:

X230 - 60% sRGB, 16.7m colors, whitepoint is cold
rMBP 15" 90% sRGB, 16.7m colors, whitepoint it cold and blueshift, color shifts depending on panels temperature
M6700 Covet. 99% aRGB, 1.1B colors, accurate whitepoint for aRGB and REC701

 

Just because a panel have high gamut doesnt mean the colours are great either. Take the 95% AUO display you find on multiple notebooks and which many resellers offer.
Notebookcheck found it to cover a range of colours but the colour reproduction was still unnatural according to them.
It had great viewing angles but not up to IPS standard.

I understand that IPS too have different quality, but the colour fidelity and white/black are usually better than most TN.

 

Just my two cents, but I've used a lot of crap TN panels (the really cheap ones), my W520 has one of those 95% NTSC TN panels, and I have a few IPS displays around (convertible laptop, tablet, desktop). I don't really *need* IPS since I'm not creating content where color accuracy is important, but even my 95% panel is noticeably better than your standard TN panel, and my IPS panels (while not fancy panels like a Dreamcolor) are still a lot better overall in picture quality than a standard TN panel.

My games, videos, movies, and pictures all look better on my IPS displays (and 95% TN panel), so I'd say that any display upgrades you can get (including IPS), I'd get them within a heartbeat.

 

Anything you interact with continuously and constantly is worth getting better:

1) Pointing device:

Lenovo TrackPoint better than any other knockoff (Dell...) and both are much better than any touchpad and when talking strictly mobility; all better than an external mouse.

(Though there are some touchpads I've used that are so bad that an external mouse is REQUIRED).



2) Keyboard:

Again: IBM/Lenovo is my preference (in US layout), followed by standard keyboards with US layout. Anything else (eg. English/French keyboards) should go straight to the dumpster (yeah; they're that bad).



3) Screen/monitor:

Anything extra spent here for either resolution (above 1600x900) or display type (Matte greatly preferred) is money well spent. This is what you'll be looking at (possibly for the next 5 years or ~15K hours).




Everything else on a notebook you can (possibly) adjust to and not worth worrying too much about.

But the three above ways we interact with our computers are all worth spending (almost anything within reason) to get the best fit for us. Always.

 

TotE has hit the nail on the head - the monitor is the one part of any PC with which you interact most and - if you'll pardon the expression - provides the most visible indicator of inadequate performance.

As far as which display technology is "best" is concerned, a qualifier is most definitely needed - the most commonly-used application.

For fast-action FPS gaming (all other things being equal) the faster a screen's response time and refresh rate, the better; while for photo editing, colour display accuracy and range is crucial.

Good TN panels will hit 2ms grey-to-grey (G-to-G) response times with the best hitting 1ms and some will offer refresh rates as fast as 144Hz. The fastest IPS panels offer between 5ms and 6 ms, which - for those fast-action FPS games - is just not fast enough.

Colour gamut - or how much of the appropriate "standard" (e.g. Adobe RGB, sRGB or NTSC) expressed as a percentage) gives an indication of how well a monitor will reproduce colours - the closer to 100% gamut, the better the colour reproduction. TN panels typically don't match up to IPS panels in colour gamut. Those IPS panels targeted at photo-editing users are - sometimes - individually colour-calibrated at the factory before shipping accompanied by the calibration report for that unit - these screens are usable out of the box.

Another difference between TN and IPS panels lies in the range of viewing angles (away from on-axis) before colour-shift sets in. Here again, IPS panels offer very good off-axis colour stability, while TN panels show marked colour-shift closer to on-axis. The video clip below shows how this looks:

LCD Monitors IPS vs TN Panel difference - YouTube

Like most technologies, both panel types have shown advances over the years and the IPS family has probably the most sub-variants, with the latest panels (mostly from LG) being offered in basically two price-performance levels: one, A-IPS (Advanced In-Plane Switching) offering 16 million colours and approaching 100% of sRGB gamut and just under 80% of Adobe gamut; and two, AH-IPS (Advanced High-Performance In-Plane Switching) offering just over 1 billion colours and >120% of sRGB gamut and just under 100% of Adobe RGB gamut. AH-IPS also offers better brightness performance than A-IPS and better brightness for a given power consumption - indicating higher efficiency of light-transmission through the panel.

So, what it comes down to - in terms of your original post - is "for what type of main application are you wanting to buy a laptop?" If its fast-action FPS gaming where response time/refresh rate outweigh colour/off-axis performance, then TN is the way to go. If, on the other hand, your usage will benefit more from colour/off-axis performance than from response time/refresh rate, then IPS is the better option.

Horses for courses!

I've stayed away from technical construction-related differences but, if you're curious, there's always Google...

I hope this helps.

Dave

 

Does response really do a whole lot for you though if you only have a 60 or even 120Hz refresh? 16ms response ~ 62FPS / 8ms ~ 125FPS / 2ms ~ 500FPS. Does it really matter if your response time is faster, as long as it's equal to or faster than what the monitor's refresh rate is capable of? If you go beyond the refresh of the monitor anyhow you risk texture tearing.

 

GTG response time and refresh rate are two different things though. The first affects the amount of ghosting/smearing/motion blur on fast-moving images. On the other hand, a high refresh rate of say 120Hz is displaying twice as many frames in the same period as a 60Hz screen. It's all these "in-between" frames that make everything, even just dragging around windows on the desktop, look so much smoother on a high refresh rate monitor. 120Hz also updates 8.3 ms faster than 60Hz due to the in-between frames that are not shown on the 60Hz. Quicker visual stimuli, if even by a minuscule amount, can be a huge advantage in competitive gaming, especially when you consider the fact that CS 1.6 is 100 tick and CS:GO is 128 tick.

 

I'm about 95% confident that any performance differences with different monitor response times is due to the placebo effect. The typical human reaction time is about a fifth of a second (200ms). Olympic athletes and the like are closer to a tenth of a second (100ms). There's no human being on Earth for whom a 3ms advantage is ever going to make any difference -- they would have to be unbelievably evenly matched to their opponent for something like that to matter. Also, the overall lag in multiplayer games is usually more than an order of magnitude greater than that due to the display. I guess you can find an IPS monitor for which the worst time (G-to-G is the best) is so bad that you'd notice it, but they should be fairly rare.

 

If you do any Photoshop work, an IPS panel upgrade is generally worth it. Also typically IPS panels aren't just wider viewing angles, but usually other attributes of the panel is better, like higher color gamut, contrast ratio, etc. Aka when you get an IPS panel typically it is of a better quality than a normal TN panel. Gaming laptops won't really see a huge difference with IPS, and typically they have worse refresh rates than a normal TN panel.

 

Depends, there are differences if you know where to look for it. Usually ips screen have better overall quality(which is reflected in the price). Though IPS screen seem to be more prone to QC issue, backlight bleed, tint, IPS glow etc.

 

Pardon me for jumping in, newbie here with similar question with OP.

If I only deal with text, will IPS provide benefit over TN ?

Background:
I am a software developer, working 40hours/week, using programming text editor such as Microsoft Visual Studio, SQL Server Management, Excel, Word. I mostly use black foreground and white background (sometimes the other way around, depends on application). I don't do photo/graphics manipulation. I do few hours of gaming per week, but don't care about ghosting, refresh rate, etc.

Another concern is that I have aging eyes (40+ years old) and using progressive lense, so prefer a sharp text using font size like 10pt or 12pt.

Will I get benefit moving to IPS laptop, such as Asus N550JV, or just stay with TN panel ?

Thanks in advance.

 

If you read the thread fully; yes, depending on the specific monitor you choose the benefits are there (and I think worthwhile considering the lifecycle of a new system and how much time I spend looking at the screen per day).

 

Well personally, I've upgraded laptop and got a tablet (w230ss and b&n nook hd+) after having tft and a tn panel on m11x,which is dreadful probably one of worst ones. The higher quality and pixel density displays really reduce my eye strain, can even read books and eyes don't bleed after half an hour... Or at all at that matter. Before I got them, I couldn't even have imagined screens advanced this far.

I'd recommend having a look at the panel close up first or read up some reviews at the very least, but especially for reading etc. A good quality panel is an eye saver

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I generally prefer IPS screens for their much improved view angles. There are TFT panels with great color (I have an old dell monitor that I had a hard time determining if it was an ips or tft panel). The biggest problem is you will probably never see a laptops screen until after you have bought it. With a tft panel your view angles and color reproduction could be all over the place, but with an IPS panel (which is what high end phones, tablets, and TVs use) you know there is a good baseline that you are going to get a good display.

Refresh on IPS displays are pretty standard, but so are tft unless you get one of the 120khz ones. And you are not likely to see that on non-gaming laptops. So display quality levels still go from basic TFT, to IPS, to gaming laptop TFT/IPS

 

Maybe? But getting one solely for that purpose would be like buying a Porsche to go grocery shopping. Wells, maybe that's an exaggeration, but you get my point.

Like many have said there are some pretty good TN quality screens out there already and if this is your only concern, there may not be any noticeably dramatic improvements.

Just keep in mind that sharper text is not the most compelling selling point behind these panels. Rather, their superior color fidelity that contains their true benefits.

 

Generally speaking, IPS panels are easier on one's eyes than their TN counterparts, partially due to their superior viewing angles.

Severe astigmatism here, and middle-aged like yourself.

With that said, only you can decide what your eyes are most comfortable with, but I'd definitely give IPS a shot.

 

IPS for better colours and the win.. Its sad that not many notebook manufacturers use them...

 

Old quote, but I'm curious how you would compare your 95% NTSC TN to your IPS panels (which are presumably 72% NTSC)? I have an AUO B156HW01 V4, which is an old 2010 95% NTSC TN glossy panel. Like you, I don't have applications where color accuracy is necessary, but I spend a large chunk of my day, almost every day, looking at my screen. Is the general "IPS > TN" guideline a result of extremely crappy TN panels bringing down the average, or is there a noticeably difference in quality for two panels of comparable color gamut? Honestly, viewing angle seems almost worthless... are there people who use their laptops from two feet to the side? It's sitting right in front of me and I can tilt the screen however I want.

The only reason this matters in the first place is that it's difficult to find 95% NTSC panels outside of reseller shops like xotic, and it's also difficult to find IPS panels on the mainstream business laptops that I'm primarily interested in (not workstations).

 

And what about PPS?


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Vertical viewing angle,

:thumbsup:

 

120 Hz has 2 downsides

1-Only noticeable in games, when IPS quality is noticed always

2-Only noticeable if your get over 60 fps, which is hard in a laptop

 

1. To each their own.

2. Unless you're playing the latest AAA titles with full detail + max AA, getting over 60 FPS isn't that hard if you have the right hardware.

 

Depends what you call right hardware, but for example Asus N550JK and MSI GE60 have IPS monitors with a 850m ddr3 and 860m, they would had a hard time getting over 60 fps

Besides, going over 60 fps can be counterproductive if the frame rate is not stable and you have not a good frame time (can happen). And where 120HZ have a big impact is on FPS, not that much in other genres

 

Right hardware = laptops equipped with 780M or 880M SLI that will basically put out 60+ FPS in pretty much every game except for the most demanding of games. 120Hz also makes things much more fluid in general so the benefits extend beyond games.

But honestly this comparison is moot, because 120Hz and IPS are mutually exclusive right now, so people in the market for 120Hz probably aren't going to care too much about IPS and vice versa.